This invention relates generally to systems and methods for enhancing situational awareness where participating automated systems may be on board aircraft, on the ground, or both.
Such situation awareness communication is not limited to gathering and presenting data from a plurality of aircraft systems when the aircraft is in the air, but also includes gathering data when the aircraft is on the ground. Situation Awareness communication is generally bidirectional. As used herein, the term aircraft refers to airplanes, helicopters, missiles and any object capable of flight.
Situational awareness refers to the degree of accuracy by which one's perception of their current environment mirrors reality. It is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening in a person's respective environment with regards to a mission. More simply, it is knowing what is going on around you. Different groups of people and different people within a group need different information to be aware of different aspects of a situation. When an enterprise loses situational awareness, there is increased potential for human error and other mishaps.
Situation awareness has traditionally been confined to ground based systems with ground based presentation to ground based users. Increasingly sophisticated on board automated aircraft systems and aircraft communication systems provide the opportunity for the aircraft to be in communication in real time with business systems on the ground. For example, airline, airport station, maintenance operations, and business functions have traditionally been complex, and characterized by failures in situational awareness. In the future, these airline operations will be even more complex because more information will be available from the aircraft to make decisions. The challenge is interpreting and relating this data in order to enhance situational awareness. A desired state of situational awareness includes the gathering of data from many sources, filtering it according to the characteristics of the current situation and presenting the critical information to the right people, on and off the airplane, as it is occurring. Such a system will eliminate information overload and poor communications.